In 1956 Professor Roskell, at the end of his discussion of the attendance of the lords in medieval parliaments, showed very briefly that attendances improved considerably during the reign of Henry VIII. More recently an attempt has been made to demonstrate a political significance in the use made by the Crown of the customary right of absent lords to nominate proctors to speak and vote for them in the House of Lords. The importance of the early sixteenth century for the development of Parliament seems to warrant another approach to the problem of attendance in the House of Lords during the reign of Henry VIII. So far the evidence has not been fully exploited nor have all the relevant questions been asked.

‘You ask me what a Lit de justice is? I will tell you!’ Thus exclaimed Louis-Adrien Le Paige, an eighteenth-century parlementaire who was excoriating the current spectacle of the king's appearance in person in the Grand-Chambre of the Parlement of Paris. Denied their ancient and customary rights of consultation and deliberation in important affairs of state, which in their view meant an active or participatory role in the legislative process, magistrates like Le Paige felt coerced in 1756 into the passive role of registering policies presented to them as faits accomplis. And thus also opens Professor Sarah Hanley's penetrating and revisionist study of this complex ceremony where monarch and magistrates met together in the legislative arena: the lit de justice. In a tour de force of painstaking scholarship Professor Hanley has convincingly proved that this ceremony, in which the king personally appeared in Parlement and sat on a specially decorated ‘seat of justice’, had evolved out of legend and myth. The lit de justice did not, as generations of parlementaires like Le Paige had claimed, emerge in the middle ages shortly after the creation of the court itself in the late thirteenth century. As Professor Hanley shows, the first such ceremony did not occur until much later, in the reign of Francis I in 1527. More importantly, she demonstrates that at its inception the lit de justice was not associated in any way with the adversarial scene depicted by Le Paige in 1756, with the king forcing his will on a recalcitrant court by making a personal appearance in the Grand-Chambre in order to force the registration of unpopular legislation.

The dominant role of the secretary of the British Labour party, Arthur Henderson, in the reconstruction of the party in 1917–18 has never been disputed. It is surprising, therefore, that little attention has been paid in recent historical literature to the development of Henderson's political ideas during the First World War and, more particularly, to the impact of the Russian Revolution on his attitude towards the conduct of international affairs and domestic politics. The neglect of this aspect of an important chapter of labour history has obscured the fact that Henderson came to advocate the reconstruction of the Labour party only after and partly as a result of his visit to Russia in mid-1917

Thomas Cromwell's association with various writers has long been noted, but how these authors' writings might reflect his personal religious beliefs has not been closely studied. An examination of one such author, William Marshall, and of his work, reveals not only that Cromwell was likely a Lutheran, but that he used the press to promote doctrinal Protestantism in England. Through Marshall, Cromwell sponsored English translations of doctrinally radical texts by Martin Luther, Joachim von Watt, and Martin Bucer. And when these books got Marshall into trouble, Cromwell protected him. The picture that emerges substantiates John Foxe's description of Cromwell as a ‘valiant soldier and captain of Christ’, but also the charge made in his bill of attainder, that he had circulated heretical books.

When James VI and I arrived in London in 1603, he created a new bedchamber, which he filled with Scottish courtiers. This he positioned, antagonistically as it turned out, between himself and the more English privy chamber. These Scottish courtiers thus had the most intimate access to James, and were able to exercise great influence over the distribution of James's favour. Whilst their importance has been debated within an English context, their significance within James's government in Scotland has not yet been addressed. These Scotsmen became the focus for patronage networks stretching from Whitehall, through the privy council in Edinburgh, to the Scottish regional elites, and helped James retain the co-operation of those elites. Against the background of attempts to gain fuller union, James sought to demonstrate the benefits of regnal union by prosecuting a pacification of crime within the Scottish and English Borders, now rechristened the Middle Shires. Patronage networks from Whitehall to Roxburghshire secured the co-operation of the Scottish Borders elite, whilst acting as conduits for information and advice back to Whitehall. This article will suggest that these relationships were integral to Scottish governmental processes in James's absence, providing a much-needed cohesive force within his fragile new multiple monarchy.

This article explores whether the British decision-makers and public were conscious of the habit-forming nature of opium at the time of the Chinese war of 1839–42, the First Opium War. While most political historians have assumed that the British authorities understood the nature of the drug, social historians argue that notions of addiction only arose, in Britain, at the end of the nineteenth century. Examining the abundant press, pamphlet, and parliamentary literature generated by the war debate, this article examines in what terms opium use was characterized. It considers the groups that intervened on both sides of the debate and draws lessons from the arguments they deployed for and against the war. Situating the source literature within the context of early Victorian values and mores, finally, it argues that the British leaders and political nation were aware of the drug's habit-forming properties. Not only was it widely recognized that it was something dangerous that was being introduced, at the point of a gun, into China, but there can be said to have existed, in Britain, a layman's notion of drug addiction.

The crisis of legitimacy following Spain's loss of empire in 1898 combined with the effects of a longer-term crisis of modernization to undermine efforts to reform the political system and regenerate the social and economic life of Spain. Rising social agitation, middle-class movements for national regeneration, Catalan bourgeois nationalism and military reaction all interacted to block the development of a modernizing alternative to the Restoration regime. As a result, the gap between the established order and society grew wider and the potential for peaceful change diminished. Events in the first decade of the century thus established the pattern of conflict that was to dominate Spanish politics until the Civil War.

This paper investigates the relationship between constitutional ideas and political action during the 1630s by comparing the privately expressed ideas of Sir Simonds D'Ewes regarding ship money with his conduct regarding the levy, especially while he was sheriff of Suffolk in 1639–40. The first section investigates the constitutionalist views expressed in D'Ewes's ‘autobiography’, unpublished during his lifetime, and their relationship to D'Ewes's attitude to the political role of the levy. The second section studies D'Ewes's conduct as sheriff, in which he gave almost no expression to constitutionalist ideas, and suggests that he struck a middle course between neglect and zeal, while finding means to oppose the levy through his connections at court. The third section seeks to establish the reasons for the inconsistencies between D'Ewes's privately expressed ideas and his public conduct, which may have lain in a belief that, in the prevailing political situation, criticism of the levy had, in order to be effective, to be expressed in terms acceptable to potentially sympathetic courtiers; D'Ewes adapted the tone of his comments on ship money to his audience in order to achieve political ends, but had also to act in ways which would make that tone convincing. Participation in the collection of ship money was therefore not inconsistent with opposition to it.

In the 1960s and 1970s both Conservative and Labour governments passed novel laws dealing with the rights of individuals at work. Overshadowed by conflicts over collective labour law, the political significance of this legislation has remained unexplored. This article suggests that the legislation struck a balance between recognizing the complexity of work in a modern society, and preserving managerial authority. It also argues that the reforms served a Conservative agenda in rooting an individual interest in work in a legal process. This was part of a pivotal challenge to the system of voluntary collective bargaining that had traditionally benefited the labour movement.

Henry VII called a number of Great Councils, as his predecessors had for at least two centuries before. Evidence has survived for five such Councils, held in 1487, 1488, 1491, 1496 and 1502. They advised the king on important matters of foreign policy and internal security, with the result that diplomatic and military action was taken and taxes were levied. They each lasted for perhaps two or three weeks, and were attended by lords spiritual and temporal, royal officials, and – on two occasions – by the elected representatives of boroughs. In three cases they coincided with meetings of the clergy in Convocation. Henry VII also held major sessions of his ‘ordinary’ council, lasting for several days at a time, sometimes for over two weeks, and attended by between twenty and sixty people; such large assemblies had been named ‘Great Councils’ in previous reigns, although under Henry VII this does not seem to have been the case. By the end of the Tudor period, by 1603, there is little question that both types of political assembly had disappeared; both the quasi-parliamentary Great Councils and the conciliar ‘Great Councils’. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to determine when this disappearance occurred and to offer some tentative suggestions as to how it happened and with what political consequences.

The Liberal daily newspaper the Tribune had only a brief life, from 15 January 1906 until 7 February 1908. Its failure was then and has since been attributed, largely by journalists, to its neglect of the ‘ realities ’ of the newspaper industry. The Tribune, it is said, was too good for its readers, and concentrated upon its leading articles to the neglect of its proper business as a newspaper, the news. It did not in other words fit the pattern which the ‘new journalism ’ of the 1890s had set. Indeed, in several important respects it was an attempt to reverse the trend, and to return to the old liberal model of journalism in which the newspaper was looked upon mainly as a vehicle for news and opinion, rather than a saleable commodity. The case of the Tribune encompassed this whole problem of the relationship between Liberalism and journalism, during a period in which both were undergoing a process of transformation and change. As such it is a case which deserves describing in more detail than has been done hitherto.

This article examines changes to Dublin's built environment in the 1960s through a study of the north inner city. It first discusses Dublin Corporation policy in the area and then studies three efforts to resist these changes, by the Irish Georgian Society, Uinseann MacEoin, and the Dublin Housing Action Committee. It argues that, due to the deficit of urban regulation emanating from central government, these groups could use preservation as a way to articulate a variety of discontents. The three campaigns all had very different conceptions of what was worth preserving in the urban environment, resisted Corporation policy in very different ways, and ultimately came into conflict. This urban activism raised issues about the nature of the city in the Irish cultural imagination, the effects of urban modernization, and the role of voluntary bodies in shaping the urban environment. Through addressing these themes this article makes a fundamental contribution to the historiography of the 1960s in Ireland by assessing the complexities of Irish modernity and the continued impact of a multiplicity of pasts on Irish politics and culture.

After the fall of France in 1940, Britain's predicament in the Middle East became worse still when the French authorities in Syria and Lebanon aligned themselves with the new Vichy government. The British, already outnumbered by Italian forces and uncertain of Arab loyalties, now found their northern flank controlled by men susceptible to Axis pressure. Both Churchill and de Gaulle responded with the determination that the Levant should be denied to the Axis and placed in friendly hands. Despite this common resolve, however, fundamental differences emerged during the Anglo-Free French invasion of Syria in 1941. This hastily improvised venture was marred by rash political tactics, poor liaison, bad diplomacy and the interventions of Churchill and de Gaulle. Although the Syrian flank was secured, this affair did serious damage to Anglo-Free French relations, created new problems in the Levant, and precipitated personal antagonism between Churchill and de Gaulle.

No aspect of fifteenth-century Florence can be completely without interest, although a bare minimum may seem to attach to a study of the Jews during this period and of their connexion with the city finances on the one hand and the establishment of a Mons Pietatis on the other. Yet the economic foundation on which the magnificent artistic and literary superstructure rested is clearly important, and that not only for the fortunes of the Medici and other ruling, or rival, families, Strozzi, Pazzi, Tornabuoni and the like, but also where it affects the daily lives of the popolo minuto, tailors, potters and fishermen, or those craftsmen who by their labours built the church of San Spirito and the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Nor can we disregard a chapter of history which closes with some of the most direct and the most practically effective of the sermons of Savonarola.

Intertextual war: Edmund Burke and the French Revolution in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and James Mackintosh. By Steven Blakemore. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1997. Pp. 256. ISBN 0-8386-3751-5. £32.

Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790–1850. By James Epstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. xi+233. ISBN 0-19-506550-6. £30.

Tom Paine: a political life. By John Keane. London: Bloomsbury, 1996. Pp. xxii+644. ISBN 0-7475-2543-9. £8.99.

Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain. By H. L. Malchow. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. xii+335. ISBN 0-8047-2664-7. £35 (hb). ISBN 0-8047-2793-7. £12.95 (pb).

Popular contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834. By Charles Tilly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Pp. xvii+476. ISBN 0-674-68980-1. £31.50.

Radical culture: discourse, resistance and surveillance, 1790–1820. By David Worrall. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Pp. ix+236. ISBN 0-7450-0960-3. £40.

Most of these books are influenced by current philosophical or methodological concerns which might be labelled, according to taste, as poststructuralism, postmodernism, or the linguistic turn; but they are influenced to very varying degrees. At one end of the spectrum stands Tilly's substantial study, essentially modernist, rejecting the latest fashions. At the other stand the books by Blakemore and Malchow, their colours firmly nailed to the mast of deconstruction. Blakemore teaches in a department of English, and although Malchow's institutional affiliation is as an historian, his book is a hermeneutic of literary texts. The great majority of ‘postmodern’ analyses of texts from this period have come from the stable of literary studies, perhaps especially from scholars concerned, as Malchow is, with the construction of gender, that great growth area of the present time. None of these books subscribes in practice to a postmodern relativism, declaring itself to be merely a construction or representation of the past: all arrive at some kind of closure, explicitly or implicitly asserting the truth of their interpretations. Historians concerned to justify their subject to funding bodies may judge this to be prudent; nevertheless a greater degree of reflexivity, of self-doubt, would have been welcome in some instances, as we shall see.

Professor Ives has demonstrated the weakness of some of the grounds for thinking that Henry VIII's will was tampered with after 30 December 1546. But he has not mentioned Paget's later testimony suggesting that the ‘unfulfilled gifts clause’ was inserted in the will after 12 January 1547. Even if it was part of the will by 30 December, the gifts implemented by its authority resulted from later skilful and ruthless manipulation of the king. Henry's ‘unwritten will’ greatly strengthened Edward Seymour and his allies and gave William Paget, who was largely responsible for its final shape, the means of buying off potential objectors to Seymour's elevation to the protectorship.

This article analyses two dissenting periodicals, the Occasional Paper and the Old Whig. It argues that these periodicals provide an opportunity to reconsider the current priorities in the historiography of eighteenth-century political thought and religious history. Having considered the contexts from which the periodicals emerged and the importance of a perceived growth in catholic proselytizing in the 1730s, it analyses the importance of ‘popery’ in religious and political discourse. Taken together, popery and private judgement provided the parameters to descibe what was termed ‘consistent protestantism’ and this was used to defend a particular version of dissent. The protestant aspect to oppositional whiggery has been largely ignored, particularly by those keen to assert the centrality of ‘classical republicanism’ to opposition language in the early Hanoverian period. This article suggests an alternative account of the transmission of the commonwealth tradition and indicates further lines of inquiry into the evolution of whig ideas.